During an earthquake, it is important for a building to be able to withstand the movement of its foundations such that it protects both its inhabitants from injury and reduces the structural and superficial damage to the building to a minimum. Whilst progress has been made on increasing the integrity of the loadbearing components of a building during an earthquake, there has been less focus on the non-loadbearing components of the building. Whilst these non-loadbearing components of the building are less essential to the overall stability of the building, their integrity both during and after an earthquake event remains an important consideration.
During an earthquake, the structural integrity of non-loadbearing components of the building such as partition walls and ceilings is of great concern, as debris from any damage to these components may fall and injure the occupants of the building. Additionally, the resilience of these components is also a major concern as any large scale damage may result in a building becoming unusable for a period of time, even if the structure of the building remains stable, slowing the recovery from an earthquake event. As such, ensuring the resilience of the non-loadbearing components of a building both during and after an earthquake is an important problem to which no satisfactory solutions have been provided.
For reference, US patent publication number 20060032157 relates to a ceiling runner/upper runner that is specially designed for allowing movement of the ceiling relative to the floor without damaging the wall. The wall system includes a ceiling runner, a floor runner and studs that are mounted between the ceiling runner and the floor runner. The ceiling runner is loosely attached to the ceiling with fasteners and the floor runner is attached to the floor with fasteners. The ceiling runner defines multiple slots. The studs are placed in slots in the ceiling runner and are not rigidly connected with a fastener or a weld. The studs move within the slots thereby accommodating horizontal movement of the ceiling relative to the floor. The horizontal ceiling movement causes the fasteners to slide within the slots in the web of the ceiling runner.
However, this prior art reference does not disclose any mechanism to facilitate horizontal movement of the board. Thus, there is a need for a device or a system that facilitates horizontal movement of the board without damage thereof during seismic conditions without changing the existing upper and lower runners.